Page 95 - Alison Balsom Quiet City FULL BOOK

Alison Balsom recording with Britten Sinfonia under Scott Stroman (photo: Hugh
Carswell)

A further aside about the recording of the Rodrigo is that here Balsom laid down her
beloved C trumpet to pick up a B flat instrument of uncertain heritage. ‘It actually
belongs to my uncle and it’s an old trumpet. I don’t even know what kind of trumpet it

is – but it’s got a copper bell and a dark, airy sort of sound. I feel that if you look at it
in terms of a singer, the C trumpet I play would be more operatic, a Joyce DiDonato

– the beauty of the sound, that’s what I’m obsessively trying to find, to make it ring,
to make it sparkle. Whereas for this piece I didn’t want that – I wanted a kind of Nina

Simone sound, something a bit different. Something that doesn’t have that
resonance, but is more velvety, oaky and gravelly. This is not something I can create

that much with my body on my C trumpet. I can do it a tiny bit with my embouchure,
but not as much as I need, and that’s why I swapped instruments. The B flat trumpet
itself is technically very flawed. It doesn’t have what we have on modern instruments

with pipes you can pull out for intonation as you’re playing, and the valves are very
noisy – but I just thought, “I don’t care, I’m getting as close as possible to that sound

world that I’m imagining for this music.” And it was really smelly, it really smelt of old
oil!’